On hoops and lesser matters

Tuesday Truths: Swamps of Jersey Blowout Edition

Welcome to Tuesday Truths, where I look at how well 127 teams in the nation’s top 11 conferences are doing against their league opponents on a per-possession basis. For a tidy little homily on why this stuff is so very awesome, go here.

Greetings, casual fans. Don’t worry about the non-competitive Super Bowl, college basketball had one of those too in 2011. Let me bring you up to speed on what’s transpired thus far in the world of college hoops….

American: Game of the Year of the Week on Thursday
Through games of February 3, conference games only
Pace: possessions per 40 minutes
PPP: points per possession Opp. PPP: opponent PPP
EM: efficiency margin (PPP – Opp. PPP)

We haven’t heard much about Connecticut lately, but look at the Huskies now. Kevin Ollie’s team rates out (+0.1498) as a hair superior in American play to a Cincinnati team (+0.1472) that the pollsters and yours truly both have in the top 10 nationally at the moment. Does this mean UConn is woefully underrated?

Not necessarily, or at least not yet. A goodly share of the Huskies’ statistical luster comes from just one game, their pitiless 80-43 pulverizing of Houston in Storrs last week. Take away that particular sequence of 40 minutes and you’re looking at a Connecticut team that’s 0.10 points better than the rest of the league on each trip.

Which, of course, is still pretty good. Ollie says better defense has made the difference for his team, and certainly holding to the Cougars to 43 points in a 68-possession contest qualifies as some quality defending. (Making half your twos and 44 percent of your threes, as UConn’s done over its past three conference games, comes in handy as well.) Still, Connecticut’s registered this statistical surge against UH, Rutgers and Temple. Now the Huskies have the perfect opportunity to back up those impressive numbers: Ollie’s team visits Cincinnati Thursday night. Let’s revisit this league and its hierarchy after that showdown.

Speaking of woefully underrated. I know Shabazz Napier isn’t one of those oh-so-trendy underclassmen, but in the category of “star scoring point guard who also plays D” he compares pretty favorably to a certain player at Oklahoma State.

Last year the Seminoles went 9-9 in the ACC while being outscored by 0.10 points for every possession the team played against conference opponents. This season Leonard Hamilton’s men have registered impressive gains and are playing their league foes to a per-possession draw. And all that has netted for FSU is a 4-5 record. This is a much better team than last season, particularly on defense, but the improvement is and will likely continue to be invisible because the 2012-13 Seminoles were historically fortunate/clutch in close games.

Weekly Syracuse tempo tracker: Still No. 127 out of the 127 teams tracked here, but getting faster. Last week the Orange played a 65-possession game at Wake Forest, easily the fastest pace Jim Boeheim’s men have exhibited in ACC play.

Weekly “We will all toil in Virginia’s underground sugar caves” tracker. I don’t know if the Cavaliers are going to finish the season having outscored the ACC by better than 0.20 points per trip, but with the Super Bowl over and done with we’re rapidly reaching the point in the season where the news is in the question itself. Who would have thought we’d be asking this?

Even before last night’s triple-overtime loss to Iowa State at home, Oklahoma State was being referred to as “fading.” Part of that’s been mere bad luck: OSU’s five conference losses have come by three, two, 12, six and one points. Then again maybe the Cowboys wouldn’t have been in that many close games to start with if this offense weren’t so indistinguishable from the rest of the non-Kansas Big 12.

I’ll swerve around the obvious puns related to OSU’s nickname and note simply that “this team” doesn’t shoot all that well, hitting just 49 percent of its twos and 34 percent of its threes in conference play. Those numbers aren’t awful, but, combined with Travis Ford’s executive decision to forego offensive boards, they’ve limited what the Pokes are able to get done on offense.

The thought coming into the season was that in the form of the Cowboys the conference had at last produced a team good enough to end KU’s streak of nine consecutive league titles (outright or shared). That was hardly a far-fetched thought. You can look at an awful lot of Big 12 teams over the past five seasons or so and not find a nucleus as strong as Marcus Smart, Markel Brown, and Le’Bryan Nash. Toss in a perimeter assassin like Phil Forte (hitting 47 percent of his threes on the season), and it’s tough to put together a scenario where this is merely the league’s No. 6-rated offense. Yet that is what has happened.

Losing Michael Cobbins to injury and Stevie Clark to Stevie Clark-ness isn’t ideal from the standpoint of depth, naturally, but the contours of this problem have come not from defenders or reserves but from the aforementioned nucleus. The solution will have to come from there as well.

The Big East bids fair to become exceptionally easy to describe in its inaugural new-look Catholic-plus-Butler season, to wit: Creighton and Villanova are more or less exactly the same team (except that Nova fouls more), and they’re both really good.

If the conference gave a Lamar Patterson Honorary “Where the Heck Did This Come From?” Award for Senior-Year Excellence, it would surely go to the Wildcats’ James Bell. Last night in Villanova’s 81-58 win over Xavier in Philadelphia, Bell scored 27 points on 6-of-10 shooting from beyond the arc. On the season he’s drained 53 percent of his twos and 39 percent of his threes as Nova’s featured scorer. Remorselessly efficient dual-threat “Look out, McDermott, and don’t worry, JayVaughn, I got this” wing James Bell, I salute you!

A weekly feature: What ails [Big Ten team that was in the AP top 5 a minute ago]?

Wisconsin has lost five of its last six games, and at the risk of jumping to explanations this has been all about threes. Opponents are making them (shooting 39 percent over the last six games), and the Badgers are not (28 percent over that same stretch — Ben Brust personally has hit just 27 percent of his triples in that time). Everything else looks pretty normal. Well, except for the part where Wisconsin’s averaging 64 possessions per 40 minutes. I’m still not entirely clear on how this came to pass.

True, I don’t suppose this is the strongest interior D we’ve ever seen in Madison, but at least Bo Ryan’s men have been making their twos as well — and doing so, even during this six-game Time of Woe, while generating a huge advantage in free throws.

In other news the struggling Badgers have me wondering whether we’ve all been mistaken about this whole “turnovers” thing all along. Obviously Ryan’s men aren’t committing turnovers — they never do — but that hasn’t been a great deal of help, has it? Meanwhile UW’s last six opponents haven’t committed turnovers either. Maybe the salient point here isn’t that Wisconsin doesn’t give the ball away, it’s that Badger games in their totality don’t have turnovers. The team’s very style — on offense and on defense — consistently diminishes the importance of one of the four factors.

Thus far on the Pac-12 season Oregon State has made a rather startling 47 percent of its threes, a fact which goes a long way toward explaining why the Beavers are much better on offense than they were last season. If this keeps up OSU will earn a spot in the Tuesday Truths record books.

And that’s it. Over the past six seasons, just four teams have shot better than 42.0 percent on their threes in major-conference play. (Though right before Tuesday Truths came online, a Texas A&M team coached by Billy Gillispie hit 43.0 percent of its attempts from beyond the arc in Big 12 action.) Meaning Oregon State has been what diligent hoops researchers in white lab coats refer to as crazy-accurate.

Weekly PANT update. Performance Against Normal Teams is at serious risk of being eclipsed as a productive analytic method if Washington State is going to insist on, you know, winning games. I mean, what’s up with that?

Good SEC teams have no choice but to play a bunch of road games against struggling opponents. That’s what the SEC is: Florida, Kentucky, and a bunch of struggling teams. I’m oversimplifying, but you get the gist.

Having two programs the quality of Kentucky and Florida in a league the quality of the SEC means the Wildcats and the Gators are very likely to dominate a list like this. Last year UF played eight conference road games against opponents that did not go on to make the NCAA tournament. And, as with the 2011 Kentucky Final Four team that went 2-6 on the road in conference play, writers yelled at Florida last season for lacking “leadership,” “toughness,” etc.

I bring this up because Florida and Kentucky will again be playing a lot of road games against teams that won’t make the tournament. The Gators and Wildcats could lose some games, and if they do their leadership and toughness will be questioned. Maybe the questions will be apposite, but whether or not they are the structural givens of the SEC mean those questions are very likely to be voiced with regard to Florida and/or Kentucky in particular.

In non-Billiken news the scheduling quirks of the A-10, cited last week, mean, incredibly, it’s still “early” in this league. Nevertheless I’ll recklessly forge ahead with a premature and foolhardy assertion: VCU might merit a little more chatter than what the Rams have received over the past month or so.

Duquesne turns every opponent into Oregon State. Off the top of my head I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a defense burnt to the ground into a fine powder by threes in quite the same way that the Dukes are currently being incinerated. I referred to this a couple weeks ago, but the updated numbers are as follows: Duquesne’s A-10 opponents are devoting 46 percent of their attempts to shots from beyond the arc, and those opponents have connected on all those attempts 44 percent of the time. It’s tough to win when the other team hits, on average, 12 threes a game.

Missouri Valley: If Wichita State doesn’t lose in the next four days, this table shall be run

Nothing is certain in this crazy “Northwestern wins at Wisconsin” world of ours, and maybe Wichita State will win on the road this week at Indiana State and Northern Iowa only to lose later at Evansville, Loyola, or Bradley. Who knows.

But on balance the likelihood is that any regular-season loss will be visited upon Gregg Marshall’s team by the Sycamores tomorrow night in Terre Haute and/or by the Panthers in Cedar Falls on Saturday. ISU does an excellent job forcing opponents off the three-point line (Duquesne take note!), and UNI has a zero-turnover perimeter-oriented offense that can score points in bunches. Keep one eye on the Valley this week.

Weekly Valley tempo and style tracker: Still faster and imbued with more sheer per-possession offensive firepower than the ACC. Oddly.

San Diego State plays at Boise State tomorrow night, in what promises to be a good challenge for the league’s best team. Leon Rice’s men — currently invisible on reputable mock brackets — could really use a win against an opponent ranked No. 5 in the nation, and, if you’re the Aztecs, traveling 954 miles to face the conference’s best non-New Mexico offense is no small task. Keep one eye on Boise tomorrow night.

Speaking of New Mexico, we may have to resume chattering about the MWC’s preseason favorites at some point soon. Since losing at home to UNLV on January 15, Craig Neal’s men have scored 1.20 points per trip during this five-game win streak.

San Diego’s low-low foul rate mars an otherwise perfect rendering of total domination, but you get the idea. West Coast teams are having a very tough time finding any way to score against Mark Few’s men. Swaggering and superior suppressive stalwarts of Spokane, I salute you!